MUSIC
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For a legacy filled with legendary performances, the Grateful Dead Live at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco on August 13th 1975 stands out. The band only played 4 shows during that entire year! (Remarkable for a band that toured non-stop for decades) and at their August 13th show, they rolled multi-track tape (which allowed for the band decades later to properly mix the show). Because the Great American Music Hall holds less than 1,000 people (another unique thing about this show), it was an invitation only performance in which the band debuted their recent studio album Blues For Allah in a live setting. Although One From The Vault has been available on CD nearly continuously since 1991, the vinyl version was only available for less than a year (and in Europe only) in the early 1990’s. This deluxe vinyl reissue marks the first time this legendary show has been available anywhere in over 20 years and the first time in America.
Few groups in recent history forged as confounding and alchemical a body of work as Coil, the partnership of Peter 'Sleazy' Christopherson and John Balance. From album to album and phase to phase their recordings spelunk perplexing depths of esoteric industrial, occult electronics, and drugged poetry, both embodying and alienating parallel currents of their peers. The late 1990's in particular were a fertile era for the duo, embracing chance, chaos, and collaboration, enhanced by recent advancements in synthesis and sampling. Fittingly, at the summit of the decade's long, intoxicated arc, their divergent strains of interstitial ritual congealed into one of Coil's most celebrated and hallucinatory creations: Musick To Play In The Dark.
Convening at Balance and Christopherson's vast Victorian house / studio in the coastal town of Weston-super-Mare, they began a series of ambitious sessions aided by inner circle associates Thighpaulsandra and Drew McDowall. Although the creative process was admittedly “iterative” and “a bit of a drug blur,” the results are astoundingly inventive and well realized, winding through shades of divination dirge, wormhole kosmische, noir lounge, ominous humor, and black mass downtempo, guided by Balance's cryptic lunar muse, which he announces on the opening track: “This is moon musick / in the light of the moon.”
What's most remarkable about the album 20 years after its release is how brazen, insular, and unpredictable it still feels. The songs follow an allusive, altered state logic all their own, warping from microscopic ripples of glitch and breath to widescreen warlock psychedelia and back again, as much hyper-sensory as inter-dimensional. Even within a catalog as eclectic as Coil's, Musick is a mystifying collection, oneiric evocations of desire, decadence, dinner jazz, and dietary advice, far beyond the pale of whatever gothic industrial ambiguity birthed such a journey.
The record closes with a slow, starlit shuffle, bathed in seething sweeps of spectral texture and high cathedral keys, like approaching the altar of some arcane temple. As the trance thickens Balance's voice rises, processed into an increasingly eerie, gaseous haze, but he resists these unseen forces, intent on delivering a final sermon: “Through hissy mists of history / the dreamer is still dreaming / the dreamer is still dreaming.”
Reissued for the first time in over 20 years, now on double vinyl LP with the complete, unedited versions of each song and an exclusive "D-side" vinyl art etching. Packaged in a sturdy matte jacket with embossed lettering and spot-gloss design elements. The compact disc version mirrors this design, and comes housed in thick tip-on "LP style" packaging. Both formats are completely remastered by engineer Josh Bonati with restored artwork and layout by Nathaniel Young - all under the project supervision of Drew McDowall and Thighpaulsandra.
credits
- An electrifying, previously unreleased studio album from the late South African genius of jazz, recorded in 2003
- The first new material by the artist to have emerged in nearly two decades
- Liner notes by Blue Note recording artist Nduduzo Makhathini, and by music educator and poet Eugene Skeef, producer of the original session
- Photographs by Siphiwe Mhlambi, Rashid Lombard and Cedric Nunn
- Fully licensed, 180g 3-sided double-vinyl edition of 500 copies, presented as the first release on Tapestry Works, plus digital release
‘A divine summary of his life story’ – Nduduzo Makhathini
Self-taught multi-instrumentalist and composer Bhekumuzi Hyacinth Mseleku (1955-2008), known as Bheki Mseleku, is widely considered to have been the most richly gifted South African jazz musician of his generation. Born in Durban, he moved to Johannesburg in the mid-1970s and played with groups including Spirits Rejoice, The Drive and Philip Tabane’s Malombo. In 1980, he left apartheid South Africa for exile in Europe, travelling with his close friend Eugene Skeef. (A percussionist, educator, poet and former close comrade of Steve Biko, Skeef originally produced the Beyond The Stars session, and contributes liner notes to this release.)
Bheki spent six difficult years in Stockholm before moving to London. After a triumphant debut at Ronnie Scott’s, in 1992 he would release his now classic debut album Celebration for World Circuit, before signing with Verve. He would go on to achieve worldwide recognition, recording and touring with jazz luminaries including Elvin Jones, Pharoah Sanders, Joe Henderson and Abbey Lincoln.
Throughout his life, Bheki struggled with both his physical and mental health. He was, as Eugene Skeef puts it, ‘a conduit for the healing energy of music to flow into the world’, a gift that came at a cost. At the start of the new century, Bheki returned to live in South Africa, but just a few years later he found himself in compound difficulties: life at home had proved too hard, and he was not well. He had also lost his imported Steinway upright piano in an unwise business deal and had not been able to play. In 2003, Skeef helped him return to London, where they hoped to realign his health and rekindle his career. Through his work with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Skeef arranged for Bheki to have access to the Steinway concert grand pianos held at Henry Wood Hall. After Bheki had spent a few weeks recuperating, Skeef booked a studio session at Gateway Studios.
Beyond The Stars was the result: a stunning, solo piano suite which condenses Mseleku’s visionary overstanding of South African music into a flowing, pulsing statement in six parts. With jazzwise echoes of marabi, amahubo, maskanda and Nguni song forms binding it to the deep music of Mseleku’s Zulu heritage, Beyond The Stars provides what Blue Note recording artist Nduduzo Makhathini describes in his liner notes as ‘a divine summary’ of Bheki’s life story: ‘a sonic pilgrimage from the beautiful and organic landscapes of Durban, to the vibrant energy of London and ultimately toward the inner dimensions of one’s being.’
But releasing the album proved impossible at the time, and so the session has remained unheard. Bheki sadly passed on in 2008, without having released a new album for five years; almost two decades have now passed since any new music by him has emerged. Working with Eugene Skeef, Tapestry Works is proud to break the silence with a first issue for Bheki Mseleku’s visionary masterpiece, Beyond The Stars.
After releasing three original albums in 1991, Les Rallizes Dénudés resumed their live performances in 1993, making their appearance in front of fans for the first time since 1988. Following the return live at the Baus Theater on February 13, the performance at CLUB CITTA 'held four days later on the 17th became one of the most notable performances in Les Rallizes Dénudés's history and is still legendary. It is said that the tremendous volume of the guitar, which surpassed the loud volume he had played in the past, shook the door of the venue, and the audience evacuated to the lobby.
The performance, which showed an amazing performance that shook all the senses of the audience, was recorded in its entirety with an 8-channel digital recorder.
In this work, based on the multi-track sound source that has been secretly stored for nearly 30 years, Makoto Kubota's soulful mixing, which has been reconstructed with the sound source recorded at the venue, is the result of the "something that surpasses the roaring sound" that resounded that night. ” is reproduced as an album work. You can experience the rally's sound that has never been heard before.
The members on the day were Takashi Mizutani (Vo, G), Katsuhiko Ishii (G), Yokai Takahashi (B), and Yukimichi Noma (Dr).
The jacket artwork features photographs taken by Takehiko Nakafuji.
Includes liner notes by Shinya Matsuyama.
■ Recorded songs:
Side A
1. The Night, Assassin's Night
2. Memory is Far Away
Side B
1. Deeper Than the Night
2. Eternally Now
Side C
1. White Awakening_1993
2. Bird Calls in the Dusk
Side D
1. Darkness Returns 2
Side E
1. The Last One_1993(Part 1)
Side F
1. The Last One_1993(Part 2)
G of D welcomes back to the catalogue its co-founder Sabla, back to his spiritual home, with a collaborative ep alongside one of the most revered and transcendental artists out there, Donato Dozzy.
Crono is a collection of 4 tracks made in the span of 2019-2022, following each other in chronological order of creation.
In an era where information runs fast, and just one year ago feels like ages ago, the music inside this ep comfortably sits in a time bubble, absorbing old and new influences and melting them organically.
Dozzy’s signature enchanting synth sequences, created with iconic synthesizers Buchla and Ems Synthi, steadily flow in and out with digital sounds and editing by Sabla.
The core of this collaboration is the exploration of these steady flows, which is a peculiarity easily found in both artists’ works. The 4 Flusso flow like water, like thoughts, like energy, lifting up with no specific intention if not the simple act of moving forward.